Morrow Mountain Revisited

Seemed like there was about 150 riders today. I think many of them were scared away by the threat of rain. Didn’t have any, as a matter of fact, it was a beautiful day for a ride.

Special thanks need to go out to all that helped put on the ride today, Jeff Viscount, the guys from Bicycles East, The Bee Team and Middle Ring Cycles. All you guys did a fine job manning the rest stops and making sure everyone was taken care of.

Now on to the ride. It was a fast start, I managed to stay in the second large group of riders. This was despite the fact that I was in severe pain for the entire ride. A pinched nerve in my lower back made it hard to stand while pedaling, and sometimes made it difficult to bridge gaps.

As you can see from the elevation profile one of the reasons for the speed during the first half of the ride is that the first 13 miles or so is basically downhill. The climbs to the entrance of Morrow Mountain State Park are actually pretty small and don’t really take anything out of you before Morrow Mountain itself.

The climb up the mountain is also not too bad, you just have to get into a rhythm and grind it out. The steepest grade I witnessed on my Garmin was 12% for a very short stretch about 2/3 of the way up. It was mostly 7-9%. The hardest part was having to climb the entire section seated to avoid shooting pains in my lower back.

As you can see from the profile above the last section is nearly all uphill with very few and generally short downhill sections. That fact and the little bit of wind that picked up as the day warmed up just a bit made the last sections hard. The good news if that after some extreme back pains at mile 43, the cramps in my legs help mask some of the remaining back pain. That and Bee Team member Curt having some ibuprofen at the last rest stop helped get me to the finish.

The new route removes a couple of the last hills on Austin and Cooley Roads so it is definitely easier than the original route.  Managed to finish strong but was cramped up just a bit. Saw quite a few people that I have ridden with previously, that is always nice to see. Overall a great ride. Here are some of my statistics for the ride today, please note that the splits are where the rest stops were located.